Some digital games suddenly became unplayable to play on the PlayStation 3 (PS3) and PlayStation Vita (PS Vita).
A Kotaku report mentioned that players on the PS3 and PS Vita were having trouble accessing their digital games after strange expiration dates suddenly appeared on them.
Sony has yet to address the issue since the problem was reported on April 8.
PS3 and PS Vita Digital Game 'Expiry Date' Issue
According to Kotaku's report, the problem occurred days before the publication reported it. The report brought up the case of Twitter user Christopher Foose, who redownloaded and re-installed his copy of the PlayStation 1 Classic (PSOne Classic) version of Chrono Cross upon encountering the strange expiration date.
Fooser mentioned in his post on Twitter that the game expired on December 31, 1969, preventing him from playing the game on both the PS3 and PS Vita.
GamesHub editor Edmond Tran was also reported by Kotaku to have encountered a similar issue with his copy of Chrono Cross. In his tweet about the issue, Tran mentioned that the PSOne Classic version of Chrono Cross could no longer be found on the PS Vita store, despite the game running fine. However, he discovered the inverse of his PS Vita's issue, wherein the PS3's PlayStation Store (PS Store) still has the game, but it couldn't be played due to it expiring in 1970.
Kotaku noted that although the issue might have looked like an attempt to encourage or force fans to purchase and play the upcoming Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers remaster, the same couldn't be said for other games affected by the mysterious expiration dates.
For instance, Twitter user Steve J tweeted about the issue affecting his copy of Final Fantasy VI, which expired on December 31, 1969, per his PlayStation console.
Meanwhile, content creator Words tweeted that while the PSOne Classic version of Chrono Cross is working for his seventh-generation PlayStation consoles, its spiritual predecessor, Chrono Trigger, does not due to the game expiring on January 1, 1970.
Other games, such as Rune Factory: Oceans, Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, Enter the Gecko, and Final Fantasy: Origins, also expired on or before 1970. What's worse is that switching to a different console didn't help.
Why PS1 Games Are Randomly Expiring
Kotaku mentioned in its report that the issue is due to a bug affecting what's known as the "Unix epoch," or the arbitrary date early engineers designated as the beginning of the operating system's lifespan.
The bug or glitch on Sony's end may have been defaulting PlayStation game license expiration dates to the Unix Epoch, which ended up with Sony's seventh-gen consoles informing their players that the affected games can't be played after midnight UTC on January 1, 1970.
The bug or glitch is concerning to the gamers and the gaming industry as a whole as it puts into question the preservation of the affected games. It also undermines the stability of the PS3 and PS Vita stores, per The Verge.
The PS3 and PS Vita stores were nearly closed down in 2021 due to Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) taking into consideration the support challenges for older devices and its ability to focus more of its resources on newer devices, per SIE's announcement.
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